Anand
Gopal Mahindra is an Indian billionaire businessman, and the chairman of
Mahindra Group, a Mumbai-based business conglomerate. There are few names
barring AA’s i.e., Ambani & Adani which have made their impact on the
Indian Industrial World by not just their wealth or contacts but by their
ideology about business & Anand Mahindra is sure one such! We all know
Mahindra Industries which is in real estate also along with automobile &
hospitality & this is why when I have been asked by Govt Polytechnic, Pune
team to share my views about sustainable construction in housing, Mr Anand
Mahindra’s above words, I found apt to start my sharing. Of-late the term
sustainable or sustainability has been used a lot & on the background of
World Environment Forums meeting on climate change, in developing countries
like ours (all the time developing only but never developed) this term is
applicable not just about the environment but on the entire society! Indeed,
any development has to be sustainable but then what exactly it means is the
major question which most of us must be thinking but never dare to ask or try
to find out! Well, about daring to seek the truth or right answer about popular
terminologies like “sustainability”, I remembered a folk story, it goes as
below…
Once
upon a time (I love this start) there lived a King who was famous for his
eccentricities (well, that’s what Kings do) & good nature also. He is known
to entertain personalities from different fields in his Darbar & even
reward them handsomely if they find such men (and women) interesting enough to
satisfy his eccentricities. One day a man came to him & claimed that he has
a potion which can make the King invisible! The King was super excited &
asked the man to demonstrate the potion on the King immediately. The man was
clever (one has to be while dealing with the King) & said three conditions
will be there on which the King agreed. First condition was this will be one
time the King can use the potion in a year. Two, the potion won’t work for the
eyes of any person who has evil thoughts for the King & third, the King
will replace the bottles of potion he buys from the man with equal volume of
gold. The King signed all three conditions & the man was paid in gold but
he wasn’t allowed to leave the city unless the King himself got a demonstration
on which the man reluctantly agreed. Though he requested the King to announce
the second condition about the use of the potion i.e., any person who thinks
evil about the King can see the King even when he has consumed the potion! The
King announced this to the city & living by his eccentric nature, drank the
potion the next morning & went for his morning walk naked, thinking nobody
can see him now! Fact was, the entire city can see the King walking naked but
everybody kept mum or ignored knowing the second condition, if you can see the
King means you think bad about him & you know what will happen to you. The
King was super happy that he was invisible though one small kid riding on the
shoulders of his father in the crowd, saw the King walking naked & asked
his father, why is this man walking naked? On this, hurriedly his father
replied, “son, we will take you to the doctor as your eyes are not well”! The
King rewarded the man with gold & the man happily left the city for never
coming back here as by the time next year King would use the potion again he
would have gone away, out of reach of the King!
This is
how people look at the term “Sustainability” in their respective business as
well in their life in totality as nobody exactly knows what it means yet nobody
acknowledges this truth that they don’t know it & how you can follow or
adopt something which you don’t know in the first place, right? So, in general the term sustainable means, “involving the use of natural
products and energy in a way that does not harm the environment.” i.e.
“नैसर्गिक साधनसंपत्ती आणि शक्तीचा पर्यावरणास बाधा न आणता केलेल्या वापरासंबंधीचे; नैसर्गिक संतुलन टिकवणारे”.!
Now, this leads to another definition & that is of “Environment”.
Here, many will smirk or laugh but do mind Environment doesn’t mean just river,
hills, trees or sky & if you think I am mad just check how we all usually
use the term Environment in our daily life where nature is not involved! “Yaar,
I don’t feel like working, environment in the office sucks” or “political
Environment in the State is too bad” or take this, “It’s the Environment in the
Home which directly affect kid’s mental health” & there are many such fronts
where environment is extensively used to define the life or surrounding of a
place which can be even a factory or a social organization. This means when we
apply sustainability factor to some industry which in our case is real estate
or say housing then it must be implacable on all aspects of the housing
industry & not just construction part of it, right?
Now, if for those readers who have reached till here by keeping
patience, let me tell you there are three apex of triangle named sustainability
in real estate & first apex is of course the Nature part which is directly
linked with planning as well construction processes of the building or say
homes. Here, a lot of R & D & adhering to ground realities as well
facts is needed as we can’t actually build anything nature friendly with the
existing work processes is a bitter fact. Right from digging the earth for
the foundations thus damaging the habitats (homes) of many species such as
earthworms to ants & cutting the trees to making concrete from sand &
metal & steel, all of which is again created by damaging earth, civil works
are bound to hamper nature. All we can do is try to create balance between what
we have damaged & what we can give back. Do mind,
if a tree is cut means gone forever just like a man is shot means a life is
gone, giving birth to another man isn’t going to bring back life of the man who
has been shot, same way by planting a new tree, the cut tree isn’t going to
grow back, first accept this fact & then define policies about sustainability,
is the need of the time! This doesn’t mean we stop building our homes, this means first try to
find options to existing construction material & till then try to save or
say try to reduce the damage we will be doing to nature while we build our
homes. Make urban policies in such a way that people will happily &
willingly save nature & not forcefully as that never going work! Take
simple example of parking policy in Pune (sorry, as I work in Pune so using it as
case study), the more car parks or two-wheeler parks space you will ask for to
provide by law in the building, the more trees will be cut because the cars
& the trees both need space & if cars are required by law this means
trees has to go! And even if you don’t make the car parking space compulsory by
law, still if you don’t provide a good public transport system for the citizens
commuting, they will buy cars & cut the trees to park these cars. As well
you have to plan the city in such a way that people will have to commute
minimum for their daily needs & reduce use of the vehicles in the first
place as public transport with conventional fuel means pollution & they too
need space for parking. And lastly whatever public transport you will be
providing, see that it will be less polluting & use green energy & not
coal base. This is a sustainable way of making policies & implementing them
& this is how we should be looking at real estate if we want to make
sustainable homes. And it starts from planning, right from using maximum
natural light to water saving taps to using less glass facades, in every aspect
of planning & workmanship, this sustainable aspect must be part of the
construction of a home. The same principle is applicable for every material
used for the construction.
And also, do mind a sustainable home must be effective for its residents
too & not just by construction practices or else its high production cost
as well maintenance cost will make it non-sustainable for its residents
creating financial issues for them! Here, the second apex of the sustainability triangle comes into picture
i.e., the user of the product, which in our case is residents of the
sustainable homes we build. Here again policies as well awareness factor comes
into the picture as however best sustainable home you build but if the
residents are not going to make use of it for any reason, then it’s a waste.
And this has been happening on many fronts, in my own projects we have provided
vermi-composting pits to treat wet garbage but they have become dump yards as
the local civic body is picking up the wet garbage & in most cased
residents don’t even bother to segregate the wet & dry garbage is a fact!
Same is with rain water harvesting or drainage recycling plants, the MSEB
(electricity) tariff is so high that the drainage treatment plants prove
uneconomical for its running costs. Either the residents must bear the added operating
cost of drainage treatment plants to recycle the drainage water or the electricity
tariffs should be reduced but we are not doing both and the outcome is again
defeat of sustainable development policies! Constant awareness programs are a
must as well the developer also should take efforts while building the homes as
all things you can expect to be done by the govt! In our projects we plant
trees in & around the project at the hands of families residing in that
project & make them adopt the respective tree so that they take proper care
of it. Do mind in any sustainable activity
there must be an ownership feeling of the people involved then only the policy
becomes sustainable! The
residents in the housing projects also must understand it’s their future also
at stake & their role in keeping a development sustainable is most vital!
And lastly, the third apex of the triangle of sustainable development
& that is the builder itself, as let’s remember what Anand Mahindra has
said, the business also must be sustainable or else there will be homes, buyers
but the builder will go to loss, then that still is a non-sustainable
development. And I am not saying builders getting in loss means only
financially, as a loss is defeat of the purpose for which the product has been
built, which in our case is a sustainable home. And for this the govt (read
as policy maker) must work hand in hand with the builders as its policies made
by the govt will decide the fate of sustainable homes or else it will always be
a mirage! The builders must understand the exact definition of sustainability
of their product & work to achieve this keeping in mind all three apexes of
the triangle. And for that, dear fellow builders,
sometimes you may have to lose few rupees from your income to achieve the
sustainability but look at the earning part of it as you will be earning future
of entire society of which your next generations will also be beneficiary; mind
it, even if our Mai-Bapp govt forgets this aspect of sustainability yet you must
keep building sustainable homes!
-
Sanjay
Deshpande
Sanjeevani
Dev.
Please view my sharing about real
estate in Pune at You Tube link below..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xX7eopH5o&t=5s
Please
do visit my blog links below to read about real estate & home buying!
https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2021/09/choosing-right-home.html
http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/2021/09/blog-post_21.html
Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way (Click link below)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345
For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below
www.punecorporation.org
Take your issues to
Hon PM at link below..
Think
Green, Think Life
www.sanjeevanideve.com / https://junglebelles.in/
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